André Cornellier needs a PR course
I work for a union. I’ve been a union supporter for all my adult life. For all their imperfections I believe working people are almost always better off with a union than without. But the president of the Ottawa local of the Amalgamated Transit Union has me getting off the union bus with this quote:
“Why wouldn’t that mother keep that child beside her?” he asked Tuesday. “There was a time when people would keep their kids very close to them … But now parents let kids go all over the place.”
He was dutifully coming to the defense of one of his members who closed his doors and drove away from a mother with a stroller, even though her toddler was already on the bus.
The driver, the article continues, “didn’t know the child was on board, stopped immediately once he was aware of that and is ‘deeply sorry for any distress he unintentionally caused’.”
This is your soundbite, bro’. It’s all you needed to say. Let the arbitrator weigh the driver’s past record, the statement of facts and the driver’s own testimony to determine what he’s in for. Where did that other stuff come from?
To suggest that the mom is somehow to blame for trying to get on the bus is to earn the justified enmity of every parent of a young child in this city. Including me.
André, try getting on a bus with a stroller and a toddler and whatever other paraphenlia you travel with as a provider for two kids. Myself, I always felt like I was on a disorganized camping trip, and I only have one kid.
And whose job is it to observe and collect fares from people who get on the bus? And how hard is it to observe a two year old climbing the steps to your bus? They don’t exactly move like the wind. Apparently the bus wasn’t that crowded.
Maybe Sarah Pacey was obnoxious? Maybe she was just stressed out from having to take the bus with an infant and a pre-schooler? But she surely didn’t deserve what happened next.
December 11th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
[...] of expressing sorrow like the driver apparently did afterward, Cornellier shoves his union boot further into his mouth all the while shoving his head, complete [...]